


oh, the weather outside is frightful

by loravura (thesleepdeprived)



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Fluff, Gen, Pale Romance | Moirallegiance, Shenanigans, Twitterstuck Secret Santa 2019, holiday party, tsss2019
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-29
Updated: 2019-12-29
Packaged: 2021-02-27 13:53:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,719
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22018198
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thesleepdeprived/pseuds/loravura
Summary: The gods of Earth C are having a party. June is a party games innovator. Roxy tries to win. Dirk dons a festive outfit. Vriska is Vriska.for twitterstuck secret santa 2019!
Relationships: June Egbert & Roxy Lalonde, Vriska Serket & Dirk Strider
Comments: 4
Kudos: 22
Collections: Twitterstuck Secret Santa 2019





	oh, the weather outside is frightful

**Author's Note:**

> Start Notes: For Renn/[striderations!](https://striderations.tumblr.com/) Happy Holidays & sorry this is so late!

It’s a late December evening, and snow is falling in drifts around the Egbert house. The landscape is getting dark, the full moon casting purple shadows where it skims across plowed piles of snow. 

The house itself, however, is lit up bright with a wide assortment of multicolored lights and lawn decor, drawing attention to the windows, where pulled back curtains reveal quite the excitement happening inside.

The dining table is piled high with all sorts of holiday treats; cookies, pies, and candies in fancy containers down the middle of the table, with more being carried out of the kitchen every so often. June eyes the confections warily over her recently emptied plate, sure in their deliciousness to certain people, but uncertain in her own ability to eat more food. She elbows her assistant party planner. 

“Hm?” Roxy responds, eyes lidded and leaning back in their chair, relaxing.

“I don’t think it’s physically possible to eat all this dessert.”

“Nah, there’s no way.”

“Should we do... the  _ other thing _ now, then?” The corner of June’s mouth curls up into a smirk, soon mirrored by Roxy’s own expression. 

“Don’t see why not,” they grin. 

In a sudden flurry of movement, the two are up on their feet. The other partygoers, in various positions and stages of post-dinner nap, look on with apprehension.

“We’re going to start party games in five minutes, meet us in the basement!” June calls out, a mischievous smirk playing across her lips. This years’ games were already sure to be the best yet.

\---

It was tradition at the pantheon’s annual holiday parties. June’s party games were equally revered and feared by her friends, who had long since learned the unusual and occasionally mildly humiliating nature of her usual fare. 

This year, as the group made their way downstairs, they were more surprised than usual to find it full of craft supplies. They were used to karaoke, drinking games, guessing the contents of a stocking, and other things June had likely found via hours of digging through parenting blogs and articles titled some iteration of “Fun Christmas Gamez 4 Kidz”. But this was new. 

The woman herself was perched on the arm of a grey sofa, watching eagerly as her friends made their way to the semicircle of seating laid out for them. Behind her were piles of meticulously prepared supplies, each containing roughly a square meter of green banner paper, normally sized pieces of colored construction paper, a cheap string of lights, some paper clips, and some tinsel. 

Sensing the questioning looks her craft menagerie was getting, June waved a hand. “We’ll get to that, everyone sit down first!” 

They all did, and she surveyed her audience. Roxy was on one end, smirking to themself. They had helped June plan this particular activity, and knew what was up. The others were a line of truly hideous sweaters lying in wait. (Dirk was the only one without, he had chosen a [festive tank top](https://exi-s-t--host.tumblr.com/post/189937391108/its-this-but-a-tank-top) instead. It was also notable that Rose had knit her own, featuring a cat with tentacles and a Santa hat.)

“You didn’t wear an ugly sweater to my Christmas party, Dirk,” June cocks her head to one side, blue eyes twinkling. “Who does that? There aren’t any extras for you to borrow around, but I think you can make it up to me by being in my group.”

“Group for what?” He asked.

“Well, it doesn’t have a name, but... actually, let’s just pick everyone’s groups first.” June quickly hurried herself with a bowl she’d filled with names earlier. “My team is going to have me, Dirk... Roxy, and Vriska!” She announced with a flourish, pulling the final two names out in a way that definitely wasn’t rigged at all. 

The other three teams were decided to be Dave, Rose, Jade, and Kanaya on one, Jake, Aradia, Calliope, and Terezi on the second, and Sollux, Karkat, the Mayor, and Jane on the final team. 

“What are we actually doing, though?” Dave asked, leaning back on his couch spot between Rose and Jade. 

“We’re going to decorate trees!” June exclaimed. “But, probably not like anyone’s done before. I’ve got some straws here, I need one person from each group to take one-” They did, with Dirk, Dave, Terezi, and The Mayor each drawing the shortest among their groups- “and whoever gets the short straw is going to be the Christmas tree of their group! You each get a bag of craft supplies to turn them into the perfect tree.”

This proclamation was met with brief silence, and then scattered groans. 

“Why can’t we just decorate Calliope?” Terezi complained. “They’re already green!”

“Kanaya’s tall and green, and she glows!” Dave argued. Rose gently shoved his shoulder, rolling her eyes.

Dirk remained silent, lips drawn tight in an expression of disapproval. Behind his shades, he was looking for his best escape routes.

The only group entirely satisfied with their tree was the final group, with the Mayor doing a little bounce for joy and Karkat practically melting over this.

“The straws picked who they picked! You’re going to have ten minutes to use the supplies you have and two feet of tape, which I’m about to hand out. There are no scissors, because I didn’t have four pairs, but other than that, I think that’s all the rules!” She quickly went around with a tape dispenser, pinning one end of a long, immediately tangled string of tape onto one puzzled group member’s hand.

“Time starts... Now!”

\---

“Alright team, huddle up!” Roxy motioned them all closer. “First of all, obvs, we gotta win this. Second of all, what should our strategy be?”

“Not,” Dirk said simply. 

Roxy rolled their eyes.

“I’ve been thinking about this for a while, so I guess I kind of have an unfair advantage!” June said. “What do you all think we should do?”

“I think,” Vriska answered, “That I want to know what your unfair advantage plans are! If you have them, use them!”

“I don’t want to cheat!”

“It’s not cheating, it’s just using your resources! Come oooooooon, we don’t have very long!”

“Well, I was thinking...”

\---

“Sit still!” Calliope cried, trying and failing to hook two ends of a long, torn strip of green paper together with a paperclip around Terezi’s waist. “Just let me-” Terezi promptly tripped over the team’s lights, sending both her and Calliope tumbling to one side. 

She pulled herself upright again, still grinning boldly as she offered an arm for Callie to pull themself up. “I get why we made Calliope the art director here and all, but I’m bored of all this boring Earth-tree smell! Where’s that construction paper!?”

\---

Jane carefully rolled their full sheet of green paper into a cone, using the smallest possible slivers of tape to hold it together. “And then,” she explained to the trolls and carapacian looking on, “we can make a hole for his face to poke out, then just decorate like a normal tree!” Her team nodded vigorously, setting to work on making colorful “ornaments”. 

\---

“So, Dave,” Rose drawled, leaning elegantly on the back of a chair. “How are you feeling?”

Dave looked blankly up at the ceiling as Jade stuck a red circle of construction paper on his nose, giggling at their team’s absolute lack of effort towards making Dave look anything like a tree. “Like we should have decorated Kanaya.”

\---

“Time’s up!” June clapped, turning away from her masterpiece and instantly snorting with laughter at the scene before her. 

The Mayor’s group had been the most successful, probably, though their string of Christmas lights and tinsel was very clearly just barely hanging onto the smooth cone shape of the Mayor’s costume. Karkat was helping hold it in place, looking lovingly down on the delighted carapacian. Sollux pretended to be unaffected, but really- he was very cute. 

Dave had ornaments, but was otherwise not very tree-like at all. Crumpled balls of construction paper were hooked onto paper clips, which were hooked onto his shades at every point where there was space, partially obscuring his clown nose. Kanaya seemed to have turned the green paper into a stylish skirt that even had pleats, but it was already falling off. Dave looked as deeply into his childhood best friend’s eyes as he could (around the balls of construction paper obscuring his vision) and knew, she would never let him live this down. 

Terezi appeared to have eaten most of her team’s craft supplies. They seemed in good spirits though, despite the mess of paper with bites taken out of it littering the floor. Terezi put the tinsel around Jake’s neck as if it were a feather boa, and he posed, sending them all into fits of laughter. 

Dirk, meanwhile, was a masterpiece. A triumph of modern art and technology. Vriska had spotted Dave’s team hanging ornaments off of his shades, and had copied the tactic. Their green paper had been torn carefully into long strips, which were then taped together and wrapped along with the tinsel and lights around Dirk. There was a crown of tinsel winding up to form a halo on his head, turning him into his own angel tree-topper.

“And here’s the fun part-” June leaned down and scooped up an armful of crumpled paper ball “ornaments” off of the floor, throwing one at Dirk. 

It bounced off of his shades, his face unchanging. Roxy and Vriska struggled to hold in their laughter. 

“Are we going to have a vote, or...” June’s voice trailed off, falling into a fit of giggles herself. 

So did everyone else, (excluding Vriska, who at first did voice her support for a vote rather loudly, before reaching over to adjust Dirk’s halo, realising the absurdity of her situation, and laughing herself) looking around and marvelling at their creations. 

These friends had played an eternal game. They had seen the face of their universe, walked among the dead, beaten death several times over, and grappled with the burden of the Alpha timeline. They were all acutely aware of the many timelines out there, full of trials and tribulations they couldn’t imagine. However in this universe, in this timeline, on this snowy December day, they all got to witness Dirk decked out in paper and tinsel. And that was something worth celebrating. 

**Author's Note:**

> based on a real game my grandma made my family play one year. seemed like it had a little egbert prank energy.


End file.
